IN a biography of Warren Zevon released years ago by Elektra, his record company at the time, the last line said: “His enthusiasms, apart from physical fitness, are still Scorcese and Eastwood movies, James Joyce, James Bond, target practice and playing dead.”

Zevon, who was only 56, doesn’t have to play anymore.

He died late Sunday, just over a year after he learned he had inoperable lung cancer.

Throughout his life, morbid humor about death and dying was a theme interwoven in his songs, so when doctors gave him just three months to live, the songwriter faced his mortality with more than a little mischief.

Zevon’s mettle didn’t allow him to crawl into a hole to die quietly. Instead, with limited time, he managed to write his epitaph in the form of a record titled “The Wind.”

Like the best verse from “Spoon River,” the songs from “The Wind” captured Zevon’s lust for life tempered by the knowledge that time is running out. This album would be considered a tremendous achievement by a man in the best health, let alone one whose lungs were being destroyed by cancer.

While recording “The Wind,” Zevon allowed VH1’s cameras into his home, his car, his porch and his studio to document the making of the album and to watch him live out his life.

He goofed around with his pal, author Carl Hiaasen, and told another pal, David Letterman, “I might have made a tactical error not seeing a physician for 20 years – it was one of those phobias that didn’t pay off.”

But there was also a dead-man-walking seriousness that broke your heart and made you wonder if his bravery was special or if that kind of true grit is in everyone.

When asked what he knows about life and death that the rest of us have to learn, Zevon simply said, “I learned how much you’re supposed to enjoy eating a sandwich.”

Zevon lived in the moment, and died in a blink.

Musically there are those who argue that Warren Zevon was a three-hit wonder with “Werewolves of London,” “Excitable Boy” and “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

Those tunes may have raised the public consciousness of who Zevon was, but those tunes, in fact, don’t scratch the surface as to the talent he possessed.

He was interested in history and geography as his ultra-violent story-song “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” attests.

He illustrated his knack at funny self-mockery in ‘Poor, Poor Pitiful Me.” And he was as poignant when he wrote “Hasten Down the Wind” (made popular by Linda Ronstadt) more then 25 years ago, as he was on “Keep Me in Your Heart” from “The Wind.”

To hear the scope of this man’s skill beyond the obvious, check out his single-career retrospective album “Genius” which was released by Rhino Records late last year or the fatter Rhino anthology from 1996, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.”